As usual, parents and mentors are willing to step up to support our team and 5190 Roboboosters. We had two vacant positions on our Board and we are very pleased to welcome Ms. Neelu Sikka to our Board as Treasurer. She has been a dedicated supporter of Green Hope Robotics FRC5190 from day one. She was instrumental in maintaining all our finances during our very short window to finance the team's trip to St. Louis in the team's rookie season. Her son Ausvin is an Engineering Leader.

We also welcome Mrs. Alzira Williams as Secretary. Another ardent supporter of FRC5190 from day one, Ms. Williams has been a business operations mentor this year and has volunteered at FLL Events where FRC5190 Team Members including her son, Devin demonstrated our robot, Mosquito, from last year.

We thank them for their volunteerism, look forward to their first Executive meeting, officially accepting them on the Board and building our 5190 Roboboosters Club with an eye toward a super successful season that celebrates the hardworking students of the Green Hope Robotics Team and their incredible coaches, Mr. Sanjay Khanna and Mr. Amir Maleki.

Supporting these students and their team and helping them achieve their goal of getting to the FIRST World Championships in St. Louis again this year will be our great privilege.

Do you have a passion for FRC5190 or STEM Education? We are currently recruiting 2 board members. We are in need of students, parents, mentors or sponsors who are passionate about supporting FRC Team 5190 and our mission to promote STEM Education. The 2 positions we currently need to be filled are Secretary and Treasurer.

We are in our infancy and have been operating without the volunteers we need. After we fill our Board positions and have an operational meeting, we will then call for a general membership meeting with an eye toward finishing this season and building a strong foundation for the team's 2015-2016 season. The NCFirst organization announced recently they will be going to a district model next year for competition and this will present fundraising challenges that we will want to be ready to face.

It is our goal to have a complete complement of working, active committees to support the team and STEM Education. If you have an eye on serving in 2015-2016, there will be elections in May for those positions. This year's positions will be appointed as set out within our charter by-laws.

Job Descriptions of Current Open PositionsThe Secretary will maintain the minutes of meetings, disperse announcements and act as support to the team as needed. This person will also assist in the maintenance of the Roboboosters Website and issue thank you notes to donors and community leaders as needed. This individual will maintain records of all correspondence and check the Booster Club email account at least once daily. Since the Booster club does not own any equipment, this person should have a computer with internet capabilities.

The Treasurer should have knowledge of double entry accounting and will prepare a monthly report to the Board on financial status of the organization. This person will handle the monthly banking reconciliation and maintain proper cash controls at all fundraisers. This individual will also prepare our Form 990 and other tax filings as required by law. During the busy build season, there are many receipts and quick requests for purchasing assistance and this need to be handled quickly. The treasurer will also maintain all records in accordance with our status as a non-profit. since the Booster club does not own any equipment, this person should have a computer with internet capabilities.

If you are interested in volunteering let us know. We'd like to fill these positions as soon as possible.

During the month of December, the students of FRC5190 applied for a United Therapeutics Grant. We learned this month that we were one of the three lucky teams in the Triangle Area of North Carolina to win one of the grants. We have since learned about the amazing work that United Therapeutics does and that they are a relatively new neighbor to us in the Triangle Area. We are also connected to them through our partnership with Kramden Institute. United Therapeutics and their generous staff have worked at Kramden participating in refurbishing computers! In fact, they may have even furbished computers our students collected in our Technology Drive. Bringing United Therapeutics to our area was an idea that was incubated at First Flight Ventures another one of our community partners. It's a small world! We are thrilled and honored by our new sponsor and we can't wait to work closely with them to promote FIRST and STEM Education in our community. Be sure to visit the United Therapeutics website! It's very cool! Learn all about their leading healthcare technology and be as inspired as we are by the work they are doing to make our world a better place. We especially love the way they use technology to help us all. Stay tuned for more exciting news about our partnership with United Therapeutics. We hope to meet local company representatives and would be thrilled to have them see our robot!

Kick-off yesterday was exciting! The build season has officially started. Part of our team attended the Regional Kick-off event at Eastern Carolina University in Greenville, NC. The other part of the team met at First Flight Ventures for a Live Telecast of the 2015 Game Reveal. This year's game is Recycle Rush and we couldn't be more thrilled. This game is a perfect extension of our team'sEco-Botics Initiative. We immediately began strategizing and testing our components. Students participated in a human player game to really immerse themselves in the experience. The team is already at Kramden again today in our build space working on our design and more strategy to make 2015 our best season yet. We have 6 weeks to build a competition-ready robot. It will take lots of hard work, team work and determination, but we can do it. We have an amazing group of students and mentors who are ready to tackle the job with gracious professionalism. We hope you will keep following along on Twitter@ghhsfrcand on our Facebook Page Green Hope Falcons FRC Team 5190. Thanks for all your support.

It's true we have Green (Green Hope Robotics, FRC 5190) in our name, but everyone knows - "Actions speak louder than words!" Our team is committed to changing the world to be the most eco-minded place in the universe. We have implemented an Eco-botic challenge to anyone affiliated with FIRST Robotics. Will you take the pledge? It will mean you are committed to thinking about eco-friendly ways to accomplish everything in your life. It will mean you want our world to be a cleaner, safer place. It will mean you understand our decisions today impact our world tomorrow. Visit the team's webpage and sign the pledge! Snag the logo for your page and demonstrate you are part of Eco-botics. The time is now to make the change!

We plan to continue to recycle, repurpose, and use renewables and eco-friendly products in all we do. We believe that doing the right thing is the FIRST thing everyone should do!

Another opportunity to volunteer for STEM Education? Bring it on! Our team loves to see all the great robotics talent out there in our community. We recently met Tom Settle of ViaRobotics at an FLL Event and he invited our team to volunteer at a VEX Robotics event. Our team was happy to help. Griffin College, Franco Savarivar, and Jordan Sayman volunteered to serve as referees for the all-day event. Wahab Khan acted as a field re-setter and Nick Maleki helped to check in the students from the 16 participating teams.

This was our first VEX event, but it won't be our last. We have already agreed to volunteer again for the next local RTP Regional Qualifier being held on February 14 at the Resurrection Lutheran School. We worked hard, but had a great time. The matches and robots were incredible to watch. We made many new friends and are excited to continue to build STEM outreach and friendships.

We are especially proud of our team and their great spirit of volunteerism.

We are very excited to announce that 5190 Roboboosters, Inc. has achieved 501(c)(3) status through our membership in ParentBooster.org. This new designation will enable us to fundraise in a more effective and efficient manner. This is good news for STEM Education in our community. Joining the ParentBooster USA Organization made perfect sense. The organization offers many resources for booster clubs like ours and provides the umbrella designation to us as a 501(c)(3) non-profit.

We have always been a non-profit corporation in North Carolina, but did not have the Federal tax-exempt designation as a 501(c)(3) which is required to accept tax-deductible donations. Prior to achieving this new status, our donors were required to make gifts to NC First and then the gifts were re-granted to us. Now the gifts can come directly to us. This allows the generous gifts made by our donors to go to work right away in helping us promote STEM Education. We will even be eligible to recoup any North Carolina sales tax that we pay when purchasing our parts for our robots.

Very soon, we will have a Paypal account for donors to make donations directly to us. We can also now accept donations in kind for goods and services. Additionally, we can accept donations at our mailing address:5190 Roboboosters, Inc.307 Belrose DriveCary, NC 27513

Thanks for your support during our transition. We feel this news is like "hitting the big time"!

On Saturday, December 13, NC First will be hosting FRC Workshops at Chapel Hill High School. As a relatively young team, there can never be enough learning opportunities for us!. This FRC Workshop Event has something for everyone. There are a wide range of topics being offered including: Strategy, Bumper Construction, Marketing, RoboRio, Multi-directional Drive Bases, and Visual Organization. All team members are highly encouraged to attend. We hope that students will sign-up for multiple workshops. This will allow our team to learn new skills and gain new insights into the FIRST universe.

Our own teammate, Griffin College will be presenting a workshop on web coding. His workshop will help students learn about coding and what it's like to be a webmaster for their team.

Here's a link to the workshops being offered at the event. Many of the workshops are available in multiple time slots. Students who attend the all-day event will lunch on their own.

As part of our ECOBotic Green Initiative, we are encouraging students to carpool to the event. We hope to share and exchange ideas as well as get to know one another better. With an exciting season ahead of us, this event promises to be a great launching pad for ideas and team-building. If you plan on attending, please contact Griffin College no later than December 1. Space is limited and we don't want to miss out!

We attended this event last year and came away from the event with great new friends and a high level of energy and commitment to FIRST. We hope to see everyone there.

Cary, NC - We were thrilled to be invited to attend and demo at the NC FLL Regional Qualifier Event held in Cary at the Resurrection Lutheran School on Lochmere Drive. 27 teams from around the area competed in the all-day event. In the morning, while teams were being judged, students from our Engineering, Marketing and Operations teams provided a hands-on demonstration. What a warm welcome we received. We enjoyed meeting all of the enthusiastic Lego League teams and made lots of new friends. It was awesome to share our love for STEM education with such a dynamic group.

We brought our "Rookie Season" robot and offered the students an opportunity to give the driving a try and had lots of skilled volunteers. We talked about our experiences as a Rookie Team last year and brainstormed some great ideas for future education experiences with this great group of kids and their mentors. The team spirit was contagious. We went there hoping to inspire and encourage these youngsters and found ourselves inspired by their determination, enthusiasm, spirit of competition and gracious professionalism.

One of our student volunteers, Griffin College was trained as a referee. "These students built amazing robots using their Lego Mindstorms. The kids showed great poise and demonstrated incredible support for each other, it was hard to believe how young they were. It was so cool to volunteer, I would definitely do it again." said College.

If you haven't ever attended a FLL Event, we highly encourage you to attend one. You are likely to feel just as inspired about the future as we were. Thanks again to NC FLL for inviting us to participate in this awesome event. Thanks to all the students and mentors from Green Hope FRC 5190 who participated. And of course, congratulations to the winners!